A field guide to hecklers

The Tribune's Nina Metz and Chris Borrelli debate vocal audience members and break them down by type

January 03, 2013|By Nina Metz, Chicago Tribune reporter

Chris: Shame is a tough, though. It curdles. But used well, it suggests a tough-love empathy on the part of the performer. A good comic will allow a little babbling and personal grave-digging, which hands the idiot a shovel to dig himself in deeper. I think of Louis CK, whom I once saw thoroughly disarm an annoying babbler, who was in turn being heckled by the audience. Then Louis replied: “Wow, people who don’t know you hate you. How does it feel?”

Nina: Some comedians treat heckling as an act of war. Katt Williams bolted down from the stage at a show in November and challenged hecklers to a fight. Of course, heckling as a form of audience protest became the debate du jour a few months ago when Daniel Tosh told a rape joke and got some unsolicited feedback from an audience member who voiced the opinion that “rape jokes are never funny.” Tosh reportedly parried back: “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by, like, five guys right now? Like, right now?”

To me, that’s using a flamethrower to kill a housefly. If there had been more time for him to craft a response, would he have said anything differently? Who knows? Tosh is a comedian whose persona is very much tied to the idea of taunting and pushing boundaries — and maintaining the upper hand, even when he’s making fun of himself.

Chris: It does make me wonder though why a popular comedian, a Tosh-like comic with thin material, hasn’t made heckling their entire act yet. Just think: A halfway decent insult comic, combating predictably hostile audiences, could glide through a 30-minute set – until it becomes no fun. Then you just have Ed Debevic’s. Or Don Rickles, though Rickles worked rooms at a time when shouting at the stage was just the job of the Drunk.

Nina: You would like Eddie Pepitone, who is the most cuddly crank working in comedy today. He will frequently wander into the crowd and start heckling the empty stage in order to heckle himself. Just totally ripping into his own material and failings as a human being. It’s pretty brutal. And hugely, deeply funny.

Hey, how about a lightning round of some classic heckler putdowns? Steve Martin keeps it short and sweet: “Ah, I remember my first beer ...”

Chris: My favorite: “Do I come to where you work and shake the Slurpee machine?”